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Charleston Library Conference

Streamlining and Advancing Collection Development With GOBI: Bringing Your Collection Into the 21st Century

Christa E. Poparad College of Charleston, [email protected]

Lindsay H. Barnett College of Charleston, [email protected]

Sarah Hoke YBP Library Services, [email protected]

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Christa E. Poparad, Lindsay H. Barnett, and Sarah Hoke, "Streamlining and Advancing Collection Development With GOBI: Bringing Your Collection Into the 21st Century" (2014). Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference. http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315635

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Streamlining and Advancing Collection Development With GOBI: Bringing Your Collection Into the 21st Century

Christa E. Poparad, College of Charleston Lindsay H. Barnett, College of Charleston Sarah Hoke, YBP Library Services

Abstract

Based on a desire to transition from a paper‐based acquisitions system to a completely online system, College of Charleston Libraries have used the features in YBP Library Services' GOBI3 (Global Online Bibliographic Information) to streamline firm order selections, to expedite and make more transparent the firm order process, and to advance our collection development efforts.

Introduction began receiving our print approval plan titles fully cataloged and shelf‐ready in 2012. Our approval There are three key components in our firm order plan profile, which incorporates our collection process: the liaison structure between the College development goals, input, and YBP of Charleston Libraries and the teaching faculty, bibliographer recommendations, identifies our approval plan, and GOBI. content of interest based on our stated collection development needs. Profiles are built on key Liaison Structure pieces of data, including library generated Each department at the College is appropriated a specifications concerning series, publishers, portion of the firm order budget to purchase subject areas, price, format, and other criteria. In library materials based on the department’s addition to continually providing automatic student enrollment and faculty research needs. To shipments for print books of interest, e‐book facilitate communication, each academic content can also be provided. Furthermore, an department chair appoints a member of the approval plan profile can be used to drive teaching faculty as a departmental liaison while notification slips to help library liaisons and faculty the Assistant Dean for Technical Services and find additional titles of interest and to drive the Collection Development appoints a librarian or content for a demand‐driven acquisitions (DDA) library staff member as a library liaison to spend program. the money allocated in each fund. The The titles covered on approval carry typical departmental liaison solicits materials to order bibliographic data, but also include information from the faculty and passes these orders to the provided by YBP’s book‐in‐hand (and now library liaison who selects the materials in GOBI. sometimes book‐on‐screen when e‐books are In addition, library liaisons suggest potential available) profiling process. Each title is reviewed materials of interest to the faculty using the tools thoroughly to determine additional details about available in GOBI. the content of the title, such as whether a title is Approval Plan more appropriate for research purposes, whether a title was edited by someone of interest, if an In recent years, the College of Charleston has put author has affiliation with a specific university, a great deal of effort into refining our YBP and whether a title has a focus on a special topic approval plan. It has become the launching pad (like environment or religion) that may not be for expanding and advancing collection evident in its classification number. The tags development services. YBP works with a number supplied by YBP and the parameters of the of publishers and profiles thousands of titles each library's profile combine to determine whether a year. We have been satisfied with the quality and title is fit to be purchased automatically, if it is range of titles available through this service, and

Copyright of this contribution remains in the name of the author(s). Techie Issues 601 http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315635

best to review the title before purchase (i.e., to GobiTween send a notification slip), or whether it would be YBP Library Services can work with a consortium best to exclude the title altogether. We were also to allow individual users to view what has been able to create a faculty‐specific approval plan with purchased by other member libraries. In the past YBP at the College of Charleston, and when any of year, this has also expanded to identify print our faculty produce content with the publishers versus E‐Book purchases, member library versus YBP profiles, those titles are auto‐shipped to us on consortium purchases, titles active in DDA, and a separate subaccount. titles that were purchased as part of an e‐ Setting up GOBI3 collection. There is a GobiTween view in place for the Partnership Among South Carolina Academic GOBI is YBP’s portal to review and purchase Libraries (PASCAL), of which the College of content of interest. With a variety of features and Charleston is a part, to see which items other workflow options, it is important to collaborate member libraries have purchased. with YBP to find the best workflow, and customize the GOBI setup to reflect that workflow. Key Peer Group component links in GOBI for the College of Each user can create a peer group of other Charleston’s daily workflow are the following: institutions with purchase activity at YBP which purchase history including library catalog holdings, will allow the user to see if a title under whether a title is part of DDA, table of contents consideration has been purchased by comparable when available, book reviews, and library activity. or aspirational peers. While GobiTween is pre‐ configured by YBP, a peer group is customized by Logins can be provided for an unlimited number the individual user. This feature is helpful when of users, as long as they have an institutional evaluating titles that may be considered for email address. User profiles allow the flexibility to accreditation and collection assessment purposes. provide certain features such as requesting titles or allowing the ability to order titles or manage Templates other GOBI users. At the College of Charleston, all of our liaisons have “Select Only” status, which Templates speed the selection process for liaisons allows them to submit title selections only. Our by prepopulating fields such as subaccount, fund Acquisitions Manager is the only person with code, quantity, and selector initials. This feature is permissions to place orders, which has been a especially useful when prompted to enter order great help to us in reducing error and preventing details. duplication of effort. Custom user profiles can be created allowing users to define their own Streamlining Firm Order Selections workflow based on what they have the capability Our workflow is configured with the library to do. liaisons as selectors in GOBI. Departmental Some key options in use at the College of liaisons inform the library liaisons regarding titles Charleston to optimize GOBI include the they would like to have in the collection. The following: library liaison then researches the titles, selects, and submits them in GOBI. The orders are then Preferences reviewed and placed by the Acquisitions and Electronic Resources Manager. Under “General Cart Preferences,” setting the “default title view for list results” to “full” displays Slips links to features such as library activity and reviews. These can aid in determining whether to Slips are lists of titles sorted by fund code that are select a particular title. In addition, under “Basic delivered electronically in GOBI which can be Search Preferences,” the default search field and automatically distributed to faculty and staff by Boolean operator can be configured. email using the notification process. Slips are based on our YBP approval profile and represent

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areas in which we may be interested in purchasing save search parameters saves time when it is books but do not wish to have titles shipped necessary to run a specific search many times automatically. Library liaisons deliver slips to their during the year. assigned departmental faculty, and many faculty members use these lists as a method of Evaluating Titles identifying books they would like us to purchase The following assist and faculty as firm orders. This is an effective way to build the members in evaluating titles under consideration collection while ensuring that the titles we for selection. purchase are high quality and serve the research needs of our institution. In some subject areas, YBP Select Levels the number of slips can be overwhelming. In these YBP Select Levels describes the tag that YBP areas, the librarians can assist faculty by using the bibliographers assign to titles to help librarians be special features in GOBI to email a selection of better informed about the titles they are selecting pertinent titles. for their collections. Tags include “Basic‐ Searching for Titles Essential,” “Basic‐Recommended,” “Research‐ Essential,” “Research‐Recommended,” When faculty make requests, the following are “Specialized,” “Supplementary,” and “Not a Select used most often for selecting titles. Title.” The profiling system, in addition to the title summaries and peer reviews contained in many Basic Search GOBI records, has allowed us to better and more For individual titles, basic searching by keyword, efficiently select quality titles for our collection. ISBN, title, author, subject, and table of contents Rather than browsing through multiple publisher is available from the initial screen. catalogs on a weekly basis for titles, we can now use GOBI and almost exclusively to Add Titles by ISBN make book selections. Our librarians have been This feature allows a GOBI user to add a number satisfied with the quality of the titles we have of ISBNs to a list in GOBI at one time. For example: purchased based on YBP Select Levels. if a collection list is available outside GOBI, the Reviews ISBNs for the titles of interest may be added to either a folder, the select cart, or the order cart. When available, links within GOBI to reviews from This removes the lengthy process of typing each Choice, Doody’s Book Reviews, Library Journal, individual ISBN into the basic search, finding the Publisher Weekly, Book News, and speed title, and then adding it to a folder or cart in GOBI. the evaluation process. This feature is especially useful when faculty members email lists of titles or send catalogs with Library and Peer Activity circled items to their library liaisons. Library activity details the quantity sold to all libraries via YBP giving an indication of the Advanced Search popularity of a title. Local ISBN catalog holdings The advanced search feature has been invaluable loads and purchase history help prevent duplicate to us as we attempt to recognize and develop ordering. GobiTween details orders among underserved areas of our collection. This is the consortium member institutions. User created most powerful tool for collection building in peer groups allow us to see which titles have been specific areas as it provides a number of limiters purchased by institutions to whom we compare to define your search. You can limit your search to especially for accreditation and collection a specific format, LC range, subject, YBP select assessment purposes. level, and publication date, among others. We have heavily used the advanced search tool to find books in less popular academic areas and interdisciplinary studies. In addition, the ability to

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Expediting the Firm Order Process the South Carolina Lowcountry, and the North Campus Library serves working adults and Export Cart traditional students seeking educational advancement. Each library has its own collection Using the export cart to place orders has goals, and the acquisitions staff at the Addlestone streamlined and simplified our ordering process Library manages collection development for all immensely. One major benefit of the export cart is libraries. In GOBI, purchases for all libraries are that it acts as a storage facility for all the orders displayed in one place, and librarians can create we intend to place, and orders can be separate funds or subaccounts for each branch’s manipulated, added, and deleted from the export purchases, making it easy to keep purchases cart prior to placing the order. GOBI also offers organized. GOBI also offers a wealth of data for e‐ the ability to save records in the export cart as a book titles that assists in making purchases for PDF or email them, making paperless record multi‐library campuses. Most platform and keeping easier than ever. purchasing options are listed on each e‐book “Batch” Import of Records record, allowing the librarian to determine which level of access is most appropriate for his or her The most important feature of the export cart at campus. Librarians can also purchase multiple the College of Charleston, however, is the copies of a title at once, if more than one library capability to batch import records into our local collects similar materials. ILS. The presence of extensive bibliographic information in GOBI such as full LC call number Transparency and subject headings indicates we will receive quality MARC records when the titles are Order Status Visible in GOBI imported into our catalog. Prior to using GOBI, our Another benefit of GOBI is that it creates an acquisitions staff imported MARC records from opportunity for library liaisons to be more OCLC Connexion one by one before placing an involved in the acquisition process. All librarians in order, entering in order details manually. With the our institution have access to GOBI (though only use of the export cart, we can now import large the Acquisitions Manager can place orders), and orders, often 300 titles or more, into our ILS in can easily search by title or fund code to one stroke and then FTP them to YBP. Order determine the status of any orders they have details are included in the export and order submitted. GOBI offers real‐time tracking of records are created when the data is ingested in orders, allowing users to see both when an item our system. There is still some work to be done was shipped and its anticipated delivery date. This after the batch import—if our system matches a has been incredibly useful to us in the months book with an individual or series title already in leading up to the fiscal year end as we try to our catalog it will list the order with a status of determine how much of our on‐order materials pending, which will not allow it to be FTP’d. While will be received before the end of the year. these titles must be edited manually, this process is still far less time consuming and error prone Invoices Posted than importing records individually from OCLC. GOBI also acts as a storage system for all of our Multilibrary Campuses invoices for orders placed through YBP, on all of our subaccounts (firm orders, approval, DDA, e‐ GOBI also offers ease in managing purchases for book firm orders, etc.). This has allowed us to multilibrary campuses. At the College of keep paperless records of invoices in one easily Charleston, we have several specialized libraries in retrievable place. addition to the Addlestone Library, which houses our general collection. The Marine Resources Easy to Track Fund Expenditures Library serves our Marine Biology graduate students, the Avery Research Center collects YBP keeps a record of all actions taken in GOBI for materials specific to African American culture in the last three years, allowing us to easily calculate

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how much money has been spent on the approval we ultimately consider the program a success as plan, in firm orders, and in DDA in any given time we spent approximately $20,000 of our allotted period. Older data is available upon request, as $30,000 budget within five months. We have well. This has proven extremely useful for end‐of‐ decided to continue with the DDA program year reporting. permanently, with a $50,000 budget on a 12‐ month plan in the 2014‐2015 fiscal year. Advancing Collection Development Depending on the success of our program this year, we are also considering expanding into DDA Firm Order E‐Books for other material types, such as print and Prior to using GOBI, purchasing access to e‐books streaming media. was a difficult and time‐consuming process that our staff tended to avoid unless absolutely Consideration of E‐Approval Plan necessary. We typically had to purchase e‐books The success of DDA has inspired us to consider directly from publishers, which not only meant other methods of building a stronger e‐book less flexibility in platform selection but also collection, which we feel is a valuable service to signing any licenses required by the publisher and our patrons. We have been researching the in some cases browsing through pages of legal possibility of establishing an e‐approval plan, with documents to understand our rights in using the the hopes of using this plan specifically to material. With GOBI, YBP facilitates contact enhance interdisciplinary areas which are between us and the content provider and we only becoming increasingly popular fields of study. The have to sign one license with each provider that fact that librarians can view titles for a period of then allows us to make as many single‐title e‐book time on the approval bookshelf before the order is purchases as we wish. The invoices are delivered completed allows for a great deal of flexibility in from YBP through GOBI, allowing for better building a quality e‐book collection, especially purchase tracking and record keeping. considering the breadth of academic subjects interdisciplinary studies cover. DDA DDA only became a possibility to us recently Conclusion because of the advanced purchasing ability and GOBI offers a suite of services to help libraries expenditure tracking made available to us through manage almost all aspects of the acquisitions GOBI. We began a full‐scale e‐book DDA plan in process. Libraries may wish to analyze their the 2013‐2014 fiscal year using YBP and ebrary. acquisitions workflow to determine how GOBI can Our e‐book profile was based on our existing assist them in reaching their goals. At the College approval profile and we had already completed a of Charleston, we found that GOBI offered the license with ebrary, so some of the essential tools we needed to expand, improve, and elements of the plan were already in place. While streamline our services, and to advance and we encountered many issues along the way with update our collection. the plan that required creative problem solving,

References

Jones, D. (2011). On‐demand information delivery: Integration of patron‐driven acquisition into a comprehensive information delivery system. Journal of Library Administration, 51(7/8), 764‐776. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2011.601275

Pickett, C., Tabacaru, S., & Harrell, J. (2014). E‐approval plans in research libraries. College & Research Libraries, 75(2), 218‐231.

Poparad, C. E., Barnett, L. H., & Hoke, S. (2014, November). Streamlining and advancing collection development with GOBI©: Bringing your collection into the 21st century. Concurrent session

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presented at the 2014 Charleston Conference Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition, Charleston, SC. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/7MQIkh

YBP Library Services. (n.d.). GOBI tutorials. Retrieved from http://www.gobi3.com/hx/Falcon.ashx ?location=welcome

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